Portal's Opening

“The explosion was unlike anything I've ever seen before. My entire platoon was thrown off our feet and the damn thing was at least ten kilometers away. We saw the flash first of course, brilliant and white. Most of us were blinded by it; a few were lucky enough to be looking the other way when the flash hit us. A second or two later the earthquake hit, and knocked all of us down. Lucky for us we weren't in a building at the time; most of the buildings that were around us got knocked down. Then came the blast of air; it didn't last real long but it was incredibly strong. It was unlike anything I've ever seen.”

Her voice broke for a moment. Her uniform was tattered and burned, her right arm was bandaged. Every inch of her body was covered in dust, mud, or blood. She stood at attention next to her hospital bed where she was being treated. She refused to sit while giving her report.

“What happened next?”

She took a deep breath and continued the report.

“It took a while for us to recover; everyone was checking on each other. It was decided that it must have been either a nuke or meteor. We couldn't think of anything else that could do that kind of damage. We didn't see a mushroom cloud though so we decided to move towards the explosion to investigate.”

“Why didn't you call in what happened?”

She looked at the questioner with a hint of disgust.

“All of our radio equipment was dead; figured we got hit by an electromagnetic pulse. Besides, it didn't occur to us that it would be possible for anyone to not have seen that. We figured it might have been some experimental weapon. So we headed towards the explosion as quickly as we could. The going was bad though--collapsed buildings everywhere; then we came to the edge of the crater. The damn thing was huge! Maybe two or three kilometers in diameter.”

“You approached from the southern side; is that correct?”

She looked down for a moment before answering.

“Yeah, we had to swing around to the south to get over the rubble of the city. Straight paths are not an option in most of the area around the crater. Only God knows how many people died in that explosion.”

“What did you see in the crater?”

She shook her head and answered.

“Damned if I know. There’s a faint glow hanging in the air, maybe ten or twenty meters up. Shit was just falling out of the air. It was unreal. We saw figures -- didn't know what they were then of course -- jumping out and landing like it was nothing. Likely they've done this before.”

“How many did you see coming out?”

“Not too many really, one every two or three minutes. It wasn't a steady flow. By the time we got there, there was already a base camp going up. Some buildings were set up, nothing too large, there were a few different colors of buildings, which is only noteworthy because they were segregated by color. Not sure what that means.”

“What colors?”

Confusion mixed with disgust played against each other on her face.

“Green, white, blue, yellow, red, maybe. Might have been some others as well; I wasn't taking notes at the time. Not much happened for a while after that. We couldn't get any closer; the crater would have made going down incredibly difficult without hostile forces in the middle of it. We sat and watched. After about an hour they sent groups of soldiers out in different directions, twenty-four in each group.”

“How do you know they were soldiers?”

She let out a laugh, sad and dry.

“They may have super advanced technology but a gun is a gun. One of the groups was heading towards the edge of the crater about 100 meters from where we had set up. So we decided to get set up so we could take a closer look. There was no shortage of rubble to hide behind, and we figured we could get a look at them and decide if we should attack. Nothing better than a surprise attack to turn the odds in your favor. Well things never go as planned on the battlefield, do they? They must have thermal scanners or something similar in their suits because as soon as they came over the edge of the crater they started shooting. They knew exactly where we had set up. Their weapons shot some kind of hot shit that melted everything it touched and set fire to everything near by. I've never seen people die like that.

She looked down, lost in thought for a moment. The silence hung in the air. She used the back of her hand to wipe away tears threatening to form in her eyes.

“Well… it was bad. We all opened up. We took down a few of them but their armor was damn good at taking hits. Grenades work pretty well. All in all though it was a slaughter. Cover did almost no good for us. They, of course, did not suffer from the same problem. Their shots would hit the rubble, and the heat would rush around you, and then the rock would start melting. Depending on the cover it could take one, maybe two shots before you had to move. I called for the general retreat almost immediately. We tried to fight a tactical retreat but that didn't last too long. We started running, shot back at them whenever an opportunity came up, but that wasn't too often. It was bad, real bad. I don’t know if anyone else made it out. I saw so many of my friends die, in ways that I can’t even imagine…”

“The enemy, what did they look like?”She took a moment then answered.

“I can’t really tell you, humanoid? Maybe a little taller. Not sure how much was their suit and how much was them. They all had full helmets on with visors.”

“How do you know they weren't human then?”

Anger contorted her face as she kept her voice level and low.

“Do you know any factions that can open up a portal? Do you know any factions that have powered combat suits? Do you know any factions with weapons like that? They didn't move like humans; they didn't feel human. I can assure you, sir, they are not from this planet.”

“Thank you for your report. We’ll drive these aliens off Earth and extract our revenge as we do. Earth is for humans, and they’re going to find that out the hard way.”